BEFORE the tear gas came the warning. I clearly heard, "This
is an illegal assembly. You are ordered to disperse." The
helicopters circled menacingly overhead and I, along with the rest,
faced a Hobson's Choice of bad options.

You see, while we were ordered to disperse, we were also surrounded
by the police. There was literally nowhere to go. Maybe a backhoe to dig
us out, or rescue, deus ex machina, from one of the helicopters. The
helicopters supplied no relief -- only the tear gas canisters that begat
the running, the beatings and the rage.

What I'm describing was a riot in Berkeley in the late 1960s.
As a survivor of that era, I know something about what happened on
Tuesday in MacArthur Park. While "riotology" is not my
academic field, living through Berkeley in the '60s gives me an
informal masters, if not a PhD.

Typically, a peaceful demonstration turns ugly when people in the
back, craving the adrenalin charge of blood and destruction, start
throwing rocks and bottles. I have never seen riots start totally
unprovoked (not since the days of Bull Conner and the civil-rights
movement). The people in the front then bear the brunt of the police
violence, while those who started it remain in relative safety.

Sometimes protesters riot, and sometimes it is the police who lose
control of themselves. This latter seems to have been the case at
MacArthur Park.

Both sides share a lot in common during a riot. The protesters see
the police as nonhuman and the source of unreasonable authority. The
police see the protesters (soon to be rioters) as the force of anarchy
and chaos. They meet at their mutual inability to see the other as
anything but the enemy. This is how good cops hit women, broadcasters,
members of the press and people who are just trying to get out of the
way.

The early 20th century sociologist Gustav LeBon wrote about how the
members of a mob join in the energy of the moment and lose their
individual sense of self and their own values or morals. This is true of
both police and protesters.

Once the violence starts, it is easy to get lost in the passion of
the moment. It takes tremendous discipline and the willing suppressing
of our natural instincts to hold to our own values. This discipline
comes from training. Our police were clearly not prepared for what they
saw in the park.

This is a failure, not so much of the individual police officers,
but of leadership. They were not trained for dealing with a largely
peaceful group with some violent -- and probably inebriated -- people.
They were trained for civil insurrection. Their leaders, our leaders,
called the wrong play from the wrong playbook.

Pundits often observe that the military prepares for the previous
war. Well, the police are no different. Their use of force was properly
designed for urban insurrection, for the Watts Riots or the Rodney King Riots. Thousands of people looting stores, setting fires and beating
innocent shop owners might need to be cleared with the kind of authority
and level of violence we saw Tuesday. But that level was not appropriate
for thousands of peaceful people trapped in front of some provocateurs.

Am I prejudging without having been there or before the official
reports are issued? Yes. Isn't that irresponsible? No.

The reports and results of investigations will most likely follow
the established pattern of blaming a few bad apples among the marchers
and a few bad apples among the police. Like Abu Ghraib, no report will
place the responsibility at the high level where it belongs -- on the
playbook and whoever called the play.

This was a protest that did not need to become a riot. But it
became a police riot because they were given orders to quell an
insurrection instead of arresting a few violent thugs.